Quote Originally Posted by aftab View Post
I think I tried that last night - but could have done wrong.
But when I had placed a 24C on my breadboard - it worked.
But when I got 3 connectors to the circuit board with 24C on it, it did not work. However, I shall try that tonight once my classes are over.

But I may sound stupid - till now I do not understand what pull-up means. I shall attach the 4.7k resistors (or other value ?). Only know that resistors are needed to pull-up(?) to program i2c.

Shall post my result of this.

Thanks
Aftab.
Pull up....
On signal lines that can be connected to more than one device (in this case I2C's SCK and SDA), the signals aren't powered directly by any of the chips, but by power and the pullup resistors. The various devices can only apply a ground to the signal line. If no devices on the bus are applying a ground, the line stays high (logic 1, at near power supply voltage). If there are multiple devices on the bus, and any one of them applies a ground, the entire signal line drops to ground (logic 0).

If you had each chip holding the signal lines high, and one of them tried to make the signal line a low (logic 0), the other chips would either overpower it, or you'd end up with a lot of smoke in the room

Same thing goes for a pull down, but the other way in reverse.

Most of the time, the terms 'pullup' and 'pulldown' aren't so complicated. A pullup just means a high-ish value (4.7K, 10K, etc) resistor between Pin X (or whatever) and the positive supply rail. Conversely for the pull down, a resistor between Pin X and the ground rail.